When businesses began reopening recently, uncertainty was in the air. How was this safe? How can you fully enforce these policies? Why reopen now instead of trying to completely flatten the curve? These were some of the questions being asked at the time. Now, we can safely say that results have been mixed. We have successes, like restaurants with outdoor seating, and we have failures, like crowded beaches being one of the first things open. Needless to say, the reopening and how it has been handled is incredibly intriguing.

Some students have a very positive outlook on the way this is going for some businesses. They may be employed by them, be frequent customers, or maybe they think that the store did a good job. Regardless, these students all can tell who has been handling this well.

“Public libraries handled it really well. The second you walk in you have to check in and use hand sanitizer then if you touch a book you don’t want you put it in a cart and they clean it,” said sophomore Gabby Downey.

“Moo Thru [handled reopening well]. They added masks and took away their front windows to minimize their interaction. [I’ve been] going out a little bit more now and most places also have these regulations,” said senior Brayden Cole.

Other students took note of which businesses opened too early or did a subpar job in reopening. The observations ranged from a single location to an entire industry. Either way, the businesses could have done a better job in keeping their patrons safe, at least to these students.

“I think Walmart opened poorly by not having enough safety regulations sooner,” said senior Brayden Cole.

“I think that they started club sports too early and that it was poorly handled because each game that was played would have different rules and different things that you needed to prevent COVID-19, and overall it caused a lot of confusion,” said sophomore Micah Carroll.

The reopening has given people the opportunity to go back out and do things that they enjoy, however, some have decided against it because of the pandemic. A lot have chosen to stay mostly quarantined with limited trips out for things they enjoy, while others have resumed life as if we were back in November 2019. The reopening has been handled in many different ways by many different people.

“The reopening affected me because it helped me get a job and make money to buy a car. I have been playing lacrosse on Mondays and Thursdays and have games on Saturdays, but I am also able to work a lot due to businesses opening again,” said junior Ethen Welch.

“I am happy that things have been reopening and that we are getting a bit of our normal pre-COVID lives back,” said sophomore Micah Carroll.

The reopening both was and has been an interesting time for everyone. Some have praised it because we have things to do now, others have criticized it because of the health risks that come with trying to move on from a pandemic. Whichever way you choose to look at it, this has certainly been a time of great change, for better or for worse. There are positives and negatives to it, as with anything, but proper handling can bring great praise and mishandling can be a severe health risk for everyone involved. Everything is mostly opened now, and looking back, there’s still debate on whether or not things should be open right now at all. Only time will tell how things may play out.